Its been quiet sometime since I have been home.Each time,I go back,I have this hunch that the whole house has been repainted(for me ;)),the neat,sparkling ambiance seems somewhat quaint after a couple of months of separation.My mother will have sprucely arranged all my old textbooks ,novels and notebooks in the racks.The study table is right there in its place with a beautiful,ironed tablecloth and the ancient yet sturdy lamp seems so happy to have me back.It seems only yesterday I had those hourly sessions when Ma would bring back order and harmony to my room in between her anger-ridden discourse about the value of cleanliness in life.
Last year,I discovered two new additions to my bookshelf.Both were diaries,a black,short one and and the other brown and slightly larger,like a big brother to the former.There were dried stains of glue on both covers and pages seemed to be uncomfortably kept together.The year on both is 1996.I open one of the diaries.I am shocked to see that the first page for personal data is filled with pencil!!Scrawny,arrogant letters, sans the serif, boldly announce the name Ravishekhar(It was modified to Ravishekhar Chakraborty in 10th class so as to sound more serious and complete :) )I am pretty much irked as I see,in the address space, a familiar looking sequence of numbers differ from my town's pin code in one digit.8-year olds shud know this much ,atleast.
On the first page,there is a serious,jargonnish sounding phrase:Ground Attack Aircraft.Clearly distinguishable columns are drawn for Name,Country,Armour ,NATO code name and Rating.To my amazement,there is a small note on the top right corner whispering 'highly confidential'. :D
The pages that follow display the pasted photographs(sourced from the Hindu newspapers and
magazines) of many a fighter aircraft.Also jostling for place among them are postcards of combat jets which seem to have been collected on every trip to the shopping complex as freebies with candies and gums.There are around hundred such pics ,even mid-air refuelling tanks ,unmanned aerial vehicles and military transport aircraft have not been spared.The newspaper cuttings are sometimes awfully clumsy,perhaps ,those hands had not been able to locate the scissors which mother had kept hidden.The more popular IAF jets like MiG-21,Mirage,Sukhoi have multiple snaps of themselves.There is a French Atlantique early warning aircraft.There are many copies of F-16.The Tupolev 22 and F 117 seem to be in a league of their own as both have them have merited footnotes .
It all rushes back to me,I was a 8-year old once.I used to be fanatically crazy about military aircraft.Even the slightest mention of a name ,the faintest sight,was enough to draw me into fantasies for a while.Every morning,I used to be the first to pick up the newspaper from my doorstep and then scan the newspaper for defence-related news,in the hope of coming across a fantastic picture.Over time,my collection grew to two diaries fattened up with newspaper cuttings.I passionately believed for a long time that I had access to highly 'clandestine' information and used to hide them safely in a dark corner of my cupboard 'camouflaged' in my foldable chess-board.I even fancied that one day,I would happen to stumble upon an Air Force guy by chance and part away patriotically with all my 'valuable information'.
But then,there was a day when i woke up and looked at the F-16 on the front page and my usual reaction of wonder and joy got replaced by irritation and mockery(of my foolishness)Today , a combat jet pic succeeds in drawing no more than a cursory glance from me.They all seem to be the same.That day,that fateful day,I lost my childhood.It was like the storm of maturity carried away with it every last shred left of childish naivete .I stopped reading news items on aircrafts ,dismissing them as totally worthless and meaningless.And now as I held it in my hand,I realized I was holding the last remnants of a little thin boy who loved aeroplanes.
But,fortunately,every time you have the return of the prodigal son :),a mother will make sure that the two notebooks would be carefully preserved and placed in the bookshelves,so that her son could smile away a whole evening thinking of the little maniac who wrote the 'Airplane Diaries'.
On the first page,there is a serious,jargonnish sounding phrase:Ground Attack Aircraft.Clearly distinguishable columns are drawn for Name,Country,Armour ,NATO code name and Rating.To my amazement,there is a small note on the top right corner whispering 'highly confidential'. :D
The pages that follow display the pasted photographs(sourced from the Hindu newspapers and
magazines) of many a fighter aircraft.Also jostling for place among them are postcards of combat jets which seem to have been collected on every trip to the shopping complex as freebies with candies and gums.There are around hundred such pics ,even mid-air refuelling tanks ,unmanned aerial vehicles and military transport aircraft have not been spared.The newspaper cuttings are sometimes awfully clumsy,perhaps ,those hands had not been able to locate the scissors which mother had kept hidden.The more popular IAF jets like MiG-21,Mirage,Sukhoi have multiple snaps of themselves.There is a French Atlantique early warning aircraft.There are many copies of F-16.The Tupolev 22 and F 117 seem to be in a league of their own as both have them have merited footnotes .
It all rushes back to me,I was a 8-year old once.I used to be fanatically crazy about military aircraft.Even the slightest mention of a name ,the faintest sight,was enough to draw me into fantasies for a while.Every morning,I used to be the first to pick up the newspaper from my doorstep and then scan the newspaper for defence-related news,in the hope of coming across a fantastic picture.Over time,my collection grew to two diaries fattened up with newspaper cuttings.I passionately believed for a long time that I had access to highly 'clandestine' information and used to hide them safely in a dark corner of my cupboard 'camouflaged' in my foldable chess-board.I even fancied that one day,I would happen to stumble upon an Air Force guy by chance and part away patriotically with all my 'valuable information'.
But then,there was a day when i woke up and looked at the F-16 on the front page and my usual reaction of wonder and joy got replaced by irritation and mockery(of my foolishness)Today , a combat jet pic succeeds in drawing no more than a cursory glance from me.They all seem to be the same.That day,that fateful day,I lost my childhood.It was like the storm of maturity carried away with it every last shred left of childish naivete .I stopped reading news items on aircrafts ,dismissing them as totally worthless and meaningless.And now as I held it in my hand,I realized I was holding the last remnants of a little thin boy who loved aeroplanes.
But,fortunately,every time you have the return of the prodigal son :),a mother will make sure that the two notebooks would be carefully preserved and placed in the bookshelves,so that her son could smile away a whole evening thinking of the little maniac who wrote the 'Airplane Diaries'.
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